1. Field
The present disclosure relates to an oil separator to separate oil from refrigerant discharged from a compressor of a refrigerant circuit.
2. Related Art
An example of an oil separator used in a refrigerant circuit includes a container having a cylindrical shape, an inlet pipe that is disposed to penetrate through a side wall of the container and introduces refrigerant containing oil to turn along an inner circumferential surface of the container, and a refrigerant discharge pipe that is disposed to penetrate through a top wall of the container and discharges the refrigerant from which the oil is separated.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 2011-202876 discloses an oil separator that is configured such that an outer diameter d of the inlet pipe and an outer diameter D of the container satisfies 0.40≤d/D≤0.44 in order to improve separation efficiency of the oil.
However, the present inventors have discovered that the above-described configuration of the oil separator does not sufficiently solve the object of improving the separation efficiency of the oil.
As a result of the effort to find out the reason, as illustrated in FIG. 1, it was found that most of the refrigerant introduced from the inlet pipe is turning along the inner circumferential surface of the container but some of the refrigerant flows in the opposite direction of the turning direction of the refrigerant. In other words, it can be seen that the refrigerant flowing into the container trough the inlet pipe is branched by the discharge pipe so that the separation efficiency of the oil is decreased.